Vaccines are a worthless adventure. You can still get the virus and you can still spread it so what's the point of risking a serious side effect including death when getting one?
Anti-maskers and COVID deniers have been yelling about 'freedom' since the pandemic began. Now many of them are standing in the way of America's actual freedom. https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-maskers-anti-vaxxers-standing-between-us-real-freedom-2021-5 Science deniers and anti-maskers have been crying about "freedom" for the length of the pandemic. Now the US has a real chance at freedom through the vaccines. But some of those same science deniers are morphing into anti-vaxxers and stopping America from getting back to normal. America's anti-maskers have become America's anti-vaxxers. Their argument against these common-sense precautions is personal freedom. The only problem with this logic, or lack thereof, is that their claims to freedom are causing the rest of us to lose ours. It would be nice to be able to dine inside with no worry, go to the movies in a packed theater, or enjoy any of the other freedoms we enjoyed before the pandemic. But that will be impossible to do with the threat of COVID — unless we reach a certain threshold of the population who are vaccinated, probably around 80%. Who is preventing us from reaching that threshold? The 1 in 4 Americans who say they'll refuse to get vaccinated. Cat scratch fever You've heard GOP Rep. Jim Jordan pounding the table, asking when we're going to live our lives again. In a recent congressional hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci, Jordan demanded to know the precise moment the world will be back to normal and harangued the infectious disease specialist about basic safety measures. By undermining Dr. Fauci, Jordan is in turn undermining our efforts to get back to normal. As Dr. Fauci expressed, it's a paradox that Republicans legislators simply cannot seem to wrap their minds around. You've heard Sen. Ron Johnson talk double-talk on vaccines. He asked "what is the point" of getting vaccinated, undermining our attempts to reach herd immunity. By spewing this inane rhetoric, he's all but ensuring that some followers of his in Wisconsin remain unvaccinated and get COVID. Studies show that many vaccine-hesitant folks are in a 'wait-and-see' pattern and aren't completely writing off the vaccine. A positive pronouncement from their trusted elected officials or a celebrity they admire could make a world of difference. But instead of that, we get people like Jordan, Johnson, and faded rockstar Ted Nugent. I'll admit, I had a moment of schadenfreude when Nugent got COVID and whined about how bad it was. He said "it was really scary" and that he "didn't know if [he] was gonna make it." And, of course, he is right. COVID is scary, and nearly 600,000 of his fellow citizens weren't as lucky as he and didn't make it. But he remains a poster child of all "freedom-loving" COVID-deniers: anti-mask, anti-vaxand making the country suffer as a result. Former President Donald Trump, afraid to offend the faux-freedom lovers, got his vaccine in secret and waited two months to reveal it. He clearly knows that the vaccine will protect him and that his words carry a lot of weight with his MAGA disciples, up to 40% of whom don't want a shot. But instead of shouting about the success of the vaccines and winning over his supporters, Trump doesn't seem to care if his followers have the same protection that the vaccine provides. The tone these guys and their brethren have set from the beginning has prolonged the crisis. Fewer masks meant more contamination. If everyone masked, fewer people would have died. And fewer vaccines prolongs the threat of COVID for everyone. Faux freedom Even as more and more folks around the world get the vaccine, new COVID variants continue to emerge in unvaccinated communities. The vaccines have stayed ahead of the variants – at least for now. But if we don't reach herd immunity soon we could find ourselves with a variant that has outsmarted the vaccine, which could lead to another lockdown. If everyone eligible got the vaccine, we could all get our lives back as soon as Jim Jordan wants. But the "freedom" from the vaccine that the right wing clamors for could allow variants to stick around, mutate and deprive all of us again. So instead, we may have to fight variants, hunt for boosters, and mask endlessly. In pandemics past, vaccines were the key to how our country returned to normal. There is, after all, a reason no one has contracted polio in the United States since 1979. But that didn't happen in a vacuum. Public health officials, politicians, celebrities and everyday teenagers all teamed up to make the vaccine accessible, normal, and even "cool." Everyone got together, and before long, polio epidemics were no more. Today, that seems all but impossible -- not in the era of alt-right cable news and the politicians mugging for that audience. I'm not the first to say it, but instead of science leading us all to health and safety, the faux-freedom lovers are causing the rest of us to lose our freedom.
Anti-vaxxers are now convinced they’ll inherit the earth as lone survivors after vaccines kill everyone else https://www.rawstory.com/unvaccinated-tiktok/ Some users on the TikTok social media app seem to think they'll be left with the world to themselves after vaccinated people die off. The videos, hashtagged with "#unvaccinated" and other high-interest terms designed to appear on users' "For You" recommendations, have been viewed thousands and thousands of times, and are just a fraction of the misinformation spread on the platform, reported Vice. "I am Optimus Prime," says one video, using audio from the 2007 movie "The Transformers," "and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting." TikTok has been major source of coronavirus misinformation throughout the pandemic, and this latest trend of anti-vaccine content is promoted by the platform's algorithms and widely viewed. It's not clear whether the TikTok users genuinely believe that vaccine recipients will die in "three years, as a generous estimate," as one users puts it, and some posts link those claims to the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates and other elites are using the doses to depopulate the world. The videos also fit into a broader trend of TikTok users -- many wearing MAGA hats and clothing with pro-police messages -- who can't be forced to comply with "experimental treatments" recommended by the medical establishment. These users insist the COVID-19 vaccines were unsafely rushed onto the market, although both Moderna and Pfizer are seeking full FDA approval for their vaccines and hesitancy is quickly dropping. (Examples of video insanity found at article)
I have absolutely no doubt there are people like that on Tiktok that believe the world will kill off those who take vaccines. But there are also crazies who believe they have to wear three masks despite having COVID and being vaccinated twice.
Maybe in California. In Florida, we've been back to normal for a long time. The last bastion of stupidity fell when mask mandates in stores just vaporized.
Oh... the study always cited by Trumpers declaring face masks are useless and cause other health issues has been retracted. Facemasks in the COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/#!po=60.1852 If you follow the link at the article retraction --- it shows the article by an anti-masker is a complete set of lies. ================================================================ This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Medical Hypotheses serves as a forum for innovative and often disruptive ideas in medicine and related biomedical sciences. However, our strict editorial policy is that we do not publish misleading or inaccurate citations to advance any hypotheses. The Editorial Committee concluded that the author's hypothesis is misleading on the following basis: 1. A broader review of existing scientific evidence clearly shows that approved masks with correct certification, and worn in compliance with guidelines, are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission. 2. The manuscript misquotes and selectively cites published papers. References #16, 17, 25 and 26 are all misquoted. 3. Table 1. Physiological and Psychological Effects of Wearing Facemask and Their Potential Health Consequences, generated by the author. All data in the table is unverified, and there are several speculative statements. 4. The author submitted that he is currently affiliated to Stanford University, and VA Palo Alto Health Care System. However, both institutions have confirmed that Dr Vainshelboim ended his connection with them in 2016. A subsequent internal investigation by the Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher have determined that this article was externally peer reviewed but not with our customary standards of rigor prior to publication. The journal has re-designed its editorial and review workflow to ensure that this will not happen again in future. The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher would like to apologize to the readers of The Journal for difficulties this issue has caused.
The benefits of being able to fully open an economy before other nations is going to supercharge countries ahead of the pack. New Zealand: https://www.reuters.com/business/ne...tent&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
Right! I expect New Zealand to overtake the 51st largest economy in the world (up from 52) sometime in 2050!